Closer Day By Day

It is somewhat ironic that after a weekend of Sabbath rest and physical rest, we start off the week by reading Job. We start off our job week by reading Job. Geddit? Ok… forget it

Bible Passage: Job 15-16

We may or may not look like the cartoon picture on the right.

But whatever it is, Job’s situation was definitely much worse.

It is all a matter of perspective.

I am going to look at the last verse of today’s passage only…

Job 16:22

“For when a few years are finished,
I shall go the way of no return.”

When I was younger (and I am sure many of you young people out there) often feel as though we have our whole life in front of us and that we still have a long time left in this world.

The good times never seem to end. And we are lulled into thinking that they never do.

But like all things, sudden difficulties or when confronted with death, we can be shaken into the awareness and reality that life is very short.

We all heard the sad news of our sister from China who was called back to the Lord. She was just 21.

Not being in her or her family’s position, it is hard for me to imagine the pain and sorrow they must have felt in the days leading to her final rest.

But like in all funerals… death has a way of jolting us back to reality.

Job came to that realization here. The sudden loss of his children, his wealth and health ultimately helped him gain a perspective of life and death.

We have read in Chapter 7:6 that he sees his life pasing more swiftly than a skilled weaver’s shuttle (I finally discovered what this looked like when I caught the movie Unwanted on a recent plane trip). We also read last week that he compared life to the existence of a flower or passing shadow (14:1-2).

In general we do not like to talk about death.

But in facing the facts of life and its brevity - we will be pushed to making better use of our time that has been given to us.

We hope we do not have to go through the kinds of suffering that Job went through to gain that kind of perspective. But sometimes, in His love, we have to rudely jolted from our status quo.

I once heard this…

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts to us in adversity.

If God does not get our attention through His blessing or by stinging our conscience, then He could put us flat on our backs in adversity so that we can get the message!

Just a side note…

Someone who had difficulty reading the book of Job asked me how do I read it?

I admit Job is certainly not one of the easiest books to read but because it is a Poetry book, I actually find it quite nice and understandable when you read it aloud. Try it. Put some emotions into it and see how you feel.

I have not gotten down to recording a video of me reading aloud but I found some people on Youtube who did. My wife thought they were very boring and did not put ‘life’ into the readings. What do you think?